


From Darkness to the Sky

by Magi Silverwolf (Magi_Silverwolf)



Series: Defiance [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bi Diasater Cedric Diggory, Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Cedric Diggory has ADHD, Cho has the Brain Cell, Desi Harry Potter, Gen, Himbo Cedric Diggory, Intelligent Harry Potter, Other, Polyamory Negotiations, Queer Babies Learning About the World, Queer Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24844069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magi_Silverwolf/pseuds/Magi%20Silverwolf
Summary: In which, Harry is just trying his best; Cedric is a disaster bi with ADHD; and Cho has possession of their only brain cell.
Relationships: Cho Chang/Cedric Diggory, Cho Chang/Cedric Diggory/Harry Potter, Harry Potter & The Wizarding World
Series: Defiance [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1165793
Comments: 17
Kudos: 424
Collections: MC4A Year 3





	From Darkness to the Sky

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starspangledmeatball](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starspangledmeatball/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I do not own the original canon nor am I making any profit from writing this piece. All works are accredited to their original authors, performers, and producers while this piece is mine. No copyright infringement is intended. I acknowledge that all views and opinions expressed herein are merely my interpretations of the characters and situations found within the original canon and may not reflect the views and opinions of the original author(s), producer(s), and/or other people.  
> Warnings: This story may contain material that is not suitable for all audiences and may offend some readers. Additionally, there are references to canon child abuse and abuse of authority (among other potentially sketchy things). There is a brief panic attack from the narrating character and some internalized issues that may be triggering given the emotional context they are presented in. Please exercise understanding of personal sensitivities before and during reading.  
> Author’s Note(s): My beta-proofer said that with proper care & feeding, Harry could be a himbo, too.

-= LP =-  
** From Darkness to the Sky **   
-= LP =-

Harry hated dark places.

He was used to them, of course. His cupboard really didn’t get much light unless the vent on the door was open, and he was often locked in there for hours with the vent closed before Aunt Petunia would let him out for a bathroom trip or to do chores. He was often sent into the crawlspace beneath the Dursleys’ house, too, if something needed to be fixed and Uncle Vernon didn’t want to waste money on it. Being forced into dark and small spaces was just Harry’s norm.

The open space of Dudley’s second bedroom had been hard to adjust to when Harry had first been moved into it. More nights than not that first summer, Harry hadn’t been able to sleep on the bed (which was another thing he was not used to having). Luckily, the room had a battered wardrobe shoved into the corner near the equally battered bookshelf. It had been a tighter fit than the cupboard under the stairs, but the illusion of safety that the smaller space had given him had been enough for Harry to actually sleep.

The irony of trapping himself, giving up his newly acquired freedom, was not lost on him.

Hogwarts had been full of both scarily open spaces and dark places. It had also been full of people who had nothing better to do than watch Harry like he was a specimen in a zoo. Even after the debacle in the Leaky Cauldron and what little Hagrid had been able to tell him, Harry had not been expecting so many people to be interested in him. Even when Ron had immediately asked to see Harry’s scar, Harry hadn’t really expected people to really be that interested.

Honestly, it sometimes felt like he was just as trapped by people’s expectations as he had ever been when locked in his cupboard. People either loved him or hated him, with seemingly no middle ground. Not everyone who hated him  was as vicious as Snape, true, but a lot of them were still pretty bad. 

And the people who loved him all did so because of what various books said he had done. Harry had read some of the books that had included his heroic acts. If they had been marketed as fiction, they wouldn’t have been so bad. Unfortunately, they were all treated as if they were nonfiction. Harry struggled to understand how anyone could believe that a toddler could best a fifty-something-year-old wizard in magical combat, but that was among the more plausible things attributed to him by wixen historians.

Honestly, it made Harry question just how much of what they were taught was accurate. Binns was a shoddy professor but mostly because he was reenacting the same three weeks on repeat by default. So many students fell asleep during his classes or decided to do something else that hardly anyone noticed the loop. Harry didn’t know who wrote the various assignments on the board that Binns always floated through to give his lectures but that was the only change ever made to the classroom. Doing the assignments was more for guiding the students self-study, too, as any turned in weren’t returned and no one asked after any missing assignments either.

No one writing history texts seemed to cite any sources either. They all had conflicting explanations of events or wildly differing events altogether. It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to conclude that other major events of the world were just as inaccurately portrayed as Harry’s own personal history. After all, if Harry didn’t spend his childhood learning wandless magic from Tibetan monks and saving entire subspecies of gnomes from certain extinction, why couldn’t other historical figures didn’t have equally false tales shared as if they were true?

If everyone thought that Harry had defeated Voldemort, instead of it being something that his parents had done, then it was perfectly likely that, say, Salazar Slytherin left Hogwarts for some other reason than prejudice or that wixen did not used to just go to the bathroom wherever they were and vanish the mess before the UK started using indoor plumbing?

Then Harry found out about his godfather, and a horrible realization began to cement around him.

By all accounts, Harry’s dad and Sirius had been the best of friends, so close that they were considered inseparable. It had been considered a given that Sirius would have been their Secret Keeper. That had been the entire reason that the bait-and-switch idea would have worked. You know, if Wormtail hadn’t been a backstabbing coward.

Yet no one had questioned the situation when Voldemort had found the Potters. No one had even thought to do any investigation into things. No one had bothered to  give Sirius even the appearance of a trial in a kangaroo court. They had just accepted that Sirius was guilty based on assumptions that contradicted each other and thrown him in a dank cell without giving him a chance to defend himself.

All because wixen, or at least those in the UK, refused to let anyone escape the expectations that society had built for them.

Harry had never wanted to return to his locked cupboard so much in his life.

At least that dark trap had been honest in its cruelty.

Harry hadn’t exactly been surprised when Sirius had fled the country after Harry and Hermione had freed him from the locked tower room. If the head of the local judicial system and the international one couldn’t be bothered to actually help him, maybe Sirius really was better off just trading one hiding place for another until the end of time. 

Likewise, it hadn’t been a shock to discover that Lupin was leaving either. The professor had managed to go the entire school year without mentioning how well he had known Harry’s parents, after all, and all of Harry’s childhood without contacting him at all. Why wouldn’t Lupin just leave the first chance he got? Harry may have hoped he would have been enough for the man to keep contact, but the last thing he wanted was another adult trapped into taking care of him by obligation and expectations.

Harry had actually been looking forward to the Tri-Wizard Tournament. Quidditch had been canceled for it, which means that he could focus on just flying instead of the game. And with the age restriction on participation, no one would be expecting him to take part. For just one year, he would be free to be just another student.

But the Goblet of Fire had spat out his name, and no one had cared that Harry hadn’t even been interested in putting his name in or that Hogwarts already had a champion. Even Ron, after years of friendship, had believed that Harry had found a way to cheat his way into the tournament. Even Hermione, who had been adamant in finding every possible loophole to save Buckbeak last year, had no interest in finding some way of getting Harry out of the competition. McGonagall and Dumbledore, who had been so strict about the need for guardian permission to go into Hogsmeade, saw no reason to block his participation in an event that had been canceled because of its death toll.

Harry didn’t need to face down an agitated nesting dragon to understand that while the magical world was far better than staying at the Dursleys, it wasn’t really any safer. Meeting wixen expectations was no more possible than meeting Muggle ones. Pleasing Snape was just as likely as pleasing Aunt Petunia, and since Snape didn’t care how he looked to other people, that failure stung more than it did with Aunt Petunia. Even with Hermione and Ron around him, Harry felt just as alone as he always had at Privet Drive with Dudley terrorizing anyone who looked at him kindly.

Watching how many girls had taken to following him around after the announcement of the Yule Ball made Harry sick to his stomach. Being followed around by giggling girls fluttering their eyelashes like they had something in their eyes had started last year. So it wasn’t a new thing. But it now seemed like it was somehow  _ worse _ . 

He had almost asked the Ravenclaw Seeker to go with him, if only to  make the gaggle give up their stalking. Before he could gather up his nerve, he noticed that Cho seemed to be dating Cedric Diggory. That would not have been comfortable for any of them. So he didn’t bother asking, even if it did put him back at square one on who to ask.

Hermione had made it very clear that she already had a date. Ron had made several complaints about wanting to take a girl, any girl that wasn’t his sister. Ginny creeped him out more than the giggling gaggle. Parvati had already declared her intent to attend with her twin as neither were allowed to date. Lavender was escorting Seamus. For a wild moment, Harry considered asking Dean, only to stumble across Dean kissing Ernie Macmillan in the restroom nearest the Charms classroom.

Honestly, Harry just  wanted the freedom to  _ not go at all _ .

Harry let himself slide down the wall, miserable and not caring that anyone could enter the empty corridor at any moment. This was impossible! His whole life was impossible! It was like he was cursed or something. He had just wanted one year to be normal—just one year where he didn’t have to be the hero the wixen around him expected him to be. He didn’t want to be their hero at all. He didn’t want the expectations they had forged into chains around him. He didn’t want to be the Boy-Who-Lived any more than he wanted to be the Dursleys’ charity case nephew. He certainly never signed up for this champion nonsense.

He banged his head back against the wall as he wrapped his arms around his legs. He didn’t want to go to the Yule Ball. He didn’t want to have to deal with some random girl hanging off of him or, or, or  _ touching him _ . He thought that maybe going with a guy would have been easier, because why would a guy even want to do that with another guy? But Dean and Ernie hadn’t looked like they had minded, and if guys kissed each other like guys kissed girls, then that wasn’t going to be a safe option either.

He was going to be sick.

“Gray is a terrible color on anyone,” Cedric announced as he plopped down next to Harry. The Hufflepuff continued talking as he made grandiose gestures that didn’t seem to fit the situation. “I am not  referring to your fetching array of Muggle shirts either. I see you’ve gone with the two blue stripes today. Good choice. I prefer it to the shirt with the orange stripe.”

“Cedric,” Cho interrupted from where she was standing nearby, “your crush is showing.”

Harry blinked at her, confused. What she had said hadn’t  made sense on multiple levels. Cedric was just being nice, because that’s what Cedric had always done in their interactions. Nothing indicated that Cedric had a crush on him. Not to mention that she hadn’t sounded mad like Harry knew that girls did when they thought their boyfriends liked other girls. Cho rolled her brown eyes and rubbed a hand over her face.

“Guanyin, give me strength,” she muttered. “There’s two of them.”

“That’s not fair,” Cedric protested. Harry ducked as he threw his arms up. “You have no reason to say that! Harry hasn’t even mentioned why he was sitting here turning the same shade of his shirt instead of being his normal brown self. It could be something really smart!”

“Oh, yeah?” Cho countered as she crossed her arms. She managed to look both fond and exasperated with her boyfriend. “Why don’t we just ask him why he was having his perfectly reasonable panic attack then?”

“It wasn’t—I mean, I wasn’t—” Harry gulped when Cho leveled a flat look at him. After a moment, she frowned at him. Harry felt like Dudley had kicked his stomach at the sight of it. “I don’t want to go to the Yule Ball with Ginny.”

“Okay,” Cho said, dragging the oh part out for longer than necessary. At least her frown was now from confusion rather than her being upset with him. “I don’t understand why that would—“

“Everyone else that I know has dates, and McGonagall says that I have to have a date, because I’m a champion, even though I don’t want to be and never did. So now I have to face dragons and banshees and gangs of giggling girls who will want to, to,  _ to do stuff _ and I can’t— I JUST CAN’T DO THAT!”

“See?” Cedric challenged. “Perfectly reasonable!”

“Cedric, my love,” Cho said carefully, “he’s not panicking over the dragons. He’s panicking over girls.”

“That’s ‘cause he’s smart.” Cedric nodded decisively. “Girls are scary.”

“I thought I would just ask Dean, but—” Harry cut himself off. Dean might not appreciate it if Harry mentioned who he had been kissing. Harry rested his chin in the groove between his raised knees instead. “Did you know that boys can like boys like they do girls?”

“You don’t say,” Cho said dryly. “What a complete and utter  _ shock _ . I will have a heart attack and  _ die _ from the surprise.”

“Cho,” Cedric whined, “he didn’t know.”

“Noticed that, did you?” she replied in the same dry tone. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips despite that. “Look on the bright side, love. Maybe he  _ did _ notice how pretty your flying was.”

“He does fly well,” Harry agreed readily, even if he didn’t understand what that had to do with anything. Cedric looked happy about Harry noticing how well he handled a broomstick. The beaming smile made something twist in Harry’s stomach, not in discomfort but not anything that Harry could identify either, and Harry quickly looked to Cho for help. “You do, too. You both fly, uh, really well.”

“You hear that, Cedric?” Cho asked, preening just a bit as she aimed a teasing smile at her boyfriend. “Harry likes our flying—both of our flying, too. Maybe he would be willing to fly with us sometime.”

“Sure,” Harry said, because Cedric looked even happier about the suggestion. It wasn’t as if Harry didn’t enjoy flying. It could be fun to fly with others just for the joy of flying. Taking to the sky without worrying about a game was the best kind of freedom. He didn’t get to do that often.

Harry slumped again as he remembered how everything had gone sideways this year. Why would Cedric even want to spend time with him? Harry had stolen his spotlight when he had been made champion alongside him. Besides, Cedric was dating Cho, who was really cool and really smart and really pretty. She had probably made the suggestion just to be polite because she was really nice, too.

He would be that she wouldn’t want to hang off of him or kiss him or  _ do stuff _ .

Cedric was really lucky.

“You are both lucky that you’re so cute,” Cho grumbled as she dropped to her knees in front of them both. She placed one hand on Harry’s arm. Gently, almost absently, she stroked her thumb over the dark skin of his wrist. “Harry, would you give us the honor of going to the Yule Ball with us?”

“Wha’... what do you mean ‘us’? Aren’t you going with Cedric?”

“Yes, I am,” she answered, “and we would both like to go with you, too.” She smiled gently at him. “If that’s amenable to you, of course. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but it would make us very happy if you would.”

“McGonagall said that I needed to open the ball,” Harry said. His heart was pounding in his chest like it was going to burst free from his ribs. She couldn’t be suggesting what he thought she was, could she? “All the champions have to.”

“Then Cedric can have the first dance,” Cho declared as if it was that simple. She also managed to make it sound as if it were a great sacrifice that she was making. “And I get the second one, but I think we should definitely dance together as well.”

“That’s possible?” Harry couldn’t help the confusion leaking into his voice. “That’s allowed?”

“It is possible,” Cho confirmed at the same time that Cedric asked in an incredulous tone, “Why wouldn’t it be allowed?”

Harry looked between them. Cedric blinked at him before looking at Cho, who rolled her eyes upward before giving a loud sigh. Her lips moved as she muttered something. Then Harry found himself staring into her pretty brown eyes.

“You are both very lucky that you are so cute,” Cho said, repeating her sentiment from earlier. “Yes, Harry. It is possible for boys to like boys. They can even like girls at the same time. It’s even possible to like neither. It is also possible to date more than one person at a time. Anyone who says otherwise is...” She paused as if searching for a word. ”... _ confused _ .”

“Really?” Harry felt a bit of the trapped feeling starting to retreat. The weight of expectation lightened just the tiniest amount. “Not liking girls or boys is an option?”

“Not only is that an option,” she said with that kind smile, “but nothing says that you have to  _ be _ either as well.”

“ _ Oh _ ,” Harry breathed as he let that wash over him. Something inside him melted away. It felt like those first exhilarating moments when he took to the air. He was weightless.

He was free.

And no one was ever going to trap him again.

-= LP =-  
An Ending  
-= LP =-

**Author's Note:**

> Challenge/Competition Block:  
> Stacked with: QL (Season 8); MC4A  
> Team (Position): Wigtown Wanderers (Keeper)  
> Round Info: Season 08 – Round 06  
> QL Prompt(s)s: Trapped & Free  
> Individual Challenges: Gryffindor MC; Hufflepuff MC; Ravenclaw MC; Magical MC (x3); Neurodivergent; Rian-Russo Inversion (x2) (Y); Ethnic & Present (x2); Lovely Triangle (Y); Ship Sails; Setting Sail; Hold the Mayo; Lunar Era; Old Shoes (Y); Gwen’s HP Checklist [Desi Potters]; Skittles [Polyamorous]; Short Jog; Bucket Listing (Y); Two Cakes (Y); Eating Cake (Y); Green Ribbon  
> Other MC4A Challenges (Prompt): SpB [2E](Warmth); TrB [5A](Love Triangle); SuB [1E](Sacrifice); Hunt [Sp Writing Diversity](Desi Character); Ship [Sp Medium 1](Not Actually Unrequited); Chim [Joyce](Secret Genius); Fire [Medium](Yellow Ribbon Delight); Garden [Bed Types](Castle)  
> Representation: Desi Harry Potter; ADHD Cedric Diggory; Bisexual Cedric Diggory; Buddhist Cho Chang; Cho Chang/Cedric Diggory/Harry Potter (getting together)  
> Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenge(s): Car in a Tutu; Three’s Company; Larger than Life; Unicorn; Second Verse (Ladylike; Not a Lamp; White Dress; Sneeze Weasel; Spinning Plates; Unwanted Advice); Chorus (Pocky Pockets; Wabi Sabi; Fizzy Lemonade; Machismo; Peddling Pots; Mouth of Babes; Tomorrow’s Shade)  
> Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: T3 (Terrarium); SN (Rail; Spare); LiCK (Poppy; Tansy; Yarrow); FR (Satisfaction; Evolution); War (Orator; Sanctuary; Ennui)  
> Word Count: 2976


End file.
